A study examined how Cognitive Strategy Instruction in Writing (SCIW), helped enable four seventh-graders with learning disabilities to take over responsibility for their own writing performance and to scaffold one another's writing development. Teacher modeling and scaffolding, writing process collaboration, and structuring think-sheets enabled…

Health professionals concerned about children's mental health say schools have become more stressful places and that many students cannot handle the pressure. Factors contributing to students' stress include high-stakes testing, fear of failure, parent pressure, and large impersonal schools. To combat the effects of a large school, Venice High…

Maintains presumed lack of applicability of vocational development theories to persons with developmental disabilities is rooted in assumptions concerning career behavior, scope of career development strategies, and employment potential of such persons. Suggests types of involvement in career decision making that persons with developmental…

In a study of 53 psychiatric inpatients (ages 6-13), depressed children reported significantly more hopelessness, more negative self-perceptions, negative self-perceptions across a wider variety of domains, and more dysfunctional attributional styles than nondepressed controls. Additional results suggested that childhood depressive disorders may…

This study found that, compared to nonmaltreated children, 19 children (ages 8-13) who had been physically and emotionally abused by their parents showed greater depressive symptomatology, including feelings of sadness, lower self-esteem and self-worth, and perceived lack of control over aversive events (helplessness). (Author/JDD)

Forty 17- to 18-year-old subjects scoring above or below a sample median on the Beck Depression Inventory participated in a controlled study to assess their reactions to solvable and unsolvable problems with and without the interference of noise. Under helpless and nonhelpless conditions, depressive symptomatology affected problem-solving ability,…

Studied the relationships among academic achievement, learned helplessness, and psychological adjustment (self-esteem and depression), controlled for gender and age, for 1,580 students with data collected in grades 3 and 4, 6 and 7, and 8 and 9. Results show that academic achievement is directly and indirectly related to the pattern of…

Examined relationship of helplessness exhibited in 112 kindergarten children's responses to a challenging, developmentally appropriate task with depression and negative self-worth 5 years later. Found that helplessness in kindergarten predicted more depressive symptoms, as reported by children and their teachers, and more negative feelings of…

This report describes the outcomes of a one-year federally funded pilot study of 14 students with low vision or blindness (grades 3-6) and 13 teachers. The study was designed to generate practical classroom assessment procedures for measuring "learned helplessness" and recommendations for a conceptual intervention model for use in the classroom.…

This 2-year study examined the relative potency of locus of control (LOC) and motivational orientation (MO) as predictors of standardized achievement scores and learned helplessness. Also tested was the prediction that children with an extrinsic MO would be prone to adopt an external LOC over time. In the first year of the study, subjects were 158…

Both cognitive and learned helplessness models of depression stress the importance of low self-esteem in the etiology of depression and depressive symptomatology. To investigate the correlations and causal relationship of low self-esteem to depressive cognition, equal groups of low, medium, and high self-esteem college students (N=135; 89 female,…

The major task of life is to become masterful. As individuals grow the choice of which tasks to attempt and how best to achieve mastery at them becomes increasingly under their control by the situations they choose to engage in and by perceptions of their abilities. Mastery oriented people tend to attribute failure to unstable, external factors…

Learned helplessness often precedes depression. The elderly are more likely than the general population to be faced with uncontrollable events which may bring on learned helplessness. Intervention by gerontological counselors has been useful in reducing effects of helplessness. With pseudohelplessness, persons act helpless in order to control…

In 1976, suicides in the 15-24 year-old group (N=4,747) made up over 17% of all suicides in all age groups (N=26,750). In 1968, adolescent suicides (N=2,591) were only 12% of the total (N=21,000). Adolescent suicide rate is alarming unless put into perspective with the accident rate and the cultural belief in individual rights, responsibility, and…

Notes that many practitioners underestimate the occurrence of childhood depression and explains what childhood depression is, what symptoms most often indicate it, why it occurs, and what teachers can do to help depressed children. (JC)